Hippolyta
Hippolyta, daughter of Ares and Aphrodite, Queen of the Renunciates of the Northern Plains and Mistress of Battles. Overview Hippolyta's views on sexual politics were formed at an early age when she was just a wee Lesser Goddess, the illegitimate child of Aphrodite and the War-God, Ares. Back when Aphrodite was married to Hephaestus and he discovered her affair with Ares he made a big show about it, paraded the ‘Lovers’ in front of everybody, forced Aphrodite to own up to the fact that she’d mothered a child out of wedlock and had to admit that Hippolyta was her child by Ares. Of course at the time of her birth there was no hint or suspicions of the troubles that would follow when her mother's infidelity was discovered, and so she had a fairly happy childhood growing up on Mount Olympus as the patron of Battlefield Strategy and Tactics, a job she more-or-less grew into despite the professed desires of her then-parents that she should become a Healer goddess, like her cousin, Astra, or even Asclepius himself. Even her big brother, Eros (or Cupid, as he later preferred to be called), though it was an odd line of work to fall into, more reminiscent of her Aunt Athena rather than a "proper" child born to the Love Goddess, Aphrodite. Imagine her surprise, many, many years later, when it came to light that her beloved "Uncle" was in reality her biological father...and how much she had been ignorant of the goings-on of her elders. Hippolyta had watched her childhood innocence fall away as an adult woman confronted by the scorn and ridicule of being born outside of wedlock. The realization that her parents had---in effect---betrayed her, and that her trust had been for nothing, along with the added discovery that the man she had called her "father" was in fact her much-maligned Uncle...all of this caused a very rude schism to form between herself and her elders, one that did not heal for many long decades. The affair caused a real scandal that didn’t go away with the passage of the centuries. Even after Ares officially married Aphrodite and recognized Hippolyta as his get, she still felt isolated from the rest of Olympian society. Ares turned out to be a pretty decent father figure, though, brought up Hippolyta to appreciate skill at arms and the hunt, treated her almost like a son, taught her all he knew about tactics and weaponry and turned her into a real hellion of a War-Goddess. She loved him for it, of course, but as she got older she started to question things more, letting her mother’s side of her genes take over, making her curious about things like poetry, art and culture. Ares tended to approve of her diversifying interest…at least at first. Ares loves a good heroic yarn, especially if there’s a lot of bloodshed and carnage in the telling. His favorite kind of poem is one where everybody dies in the end, where wrongs are avenged and people go down to Hades’s realm singing chants about the slaughter of their enemies, the wasting of villages and the raping of women… However Hippolyta started to get these wild ideas in her head about actually talking to people you meet instead of killing them outright. She began showing mercy to defeated enemies, taking them as prisoners of war if they appealed to her fancy and spending time getting to know them before taking them to bed for a little fun. She started to see the advantage of not killing all of her enemies, of making villages into tributaries who paid your armies to leave them alone. At first Ares tolerated these new ways since Hippolyta began winning a series of major battles and built up quite a small holding in Thrace…but eventually they had a falling out and a parting of ways. Hippolyta got angry and denounced her father over his treatment of female prisoners. She thought women were literally getting the shaft everywhere, and she thought her father wasn’t even taking her serious enough anymore, even though she was his best general of armies. So she and four of her sisters who became her loyal lieutenants went to Earth and became a Demigoddess. By this time the romance between Aphrodite and Ares was starting to get a little cool…they’d had about a dozen kids between them, but Aphhrodite was starting to chafe about Ares always being away fighting battles while she stayed at home and managed the servants who had to look after the kids. One day she took Hippolyta’s side in an argument about whether women were better than men at running their own society, and like that Ares blew a tantrum and told Hippolyta that if she thought she could make such a good ruler than she ought to go out and found her own Kingdom. Hippolyta and her four sisters went beyond the borders of Thrace into the great Unknown territories along the Black Sea, and there they discovered a nomadic society of Steppe Horsemen called the Scythians living out on the fringes of the Known World. This tribe they discovered had just been in a battle with a rival clan…the men went off to war and got ambushed, slaughtered almost to a man and boy, leaving their women alone to look after the cattle. There’s every chance that---if she and her sisters hadn’t acted---those women would have fallen prey next to their voracious neighbors. Instead Hippolyta came across a woman grieving for her slain husband, praying to the Gods for relief, and in a trice she merged with that Mortal and became the Avatar she is today. Same story with the others…and like that they became the five Queens of Amazonia, organizing the women of their clan into the basis for a future army. They conquered the rest of the Scythian tribes and united them into a society of female-dominant horse archers who worship Artemis and fiercely raid the borders of what they condescendingly call ‘Man’s World.’ They’ve been living on the fringes ever since and have since created a very powerful society that’s easily the equal of all the nation-states combined to the South. They eventually tried to take over Greece pushed south past Thebes and well into Thrace itself, laying waste to the armies which tried to stand up against their arrows. The Amazons were one of the first people to use a kind of recurved bow that used horn and sinew to give it extra strength, and with an iron-tipped arrow head they can put a shaft right through a bronze shield at a hundred paces. What stopped them was Bellerophon, son of Glaucus and an Amazon named Eurymede. His father had defeated his mother in battle, so he learned archery from her and was a pretty competent general in his own right. He took up employment with the King of Tiryns, after which he made a name for himself by capturing a Pegasus---one of Dad’s sacred winged horses---and using him to help him kill a Chimaera. After a number of good career moves like that he led an army that stopped the Amazon advance at the battle of Chalidice. With a Winged Horse helping him to scout out the terrain he was able to spot the Amazon positions and outflank them, luring them out where his cavalry men were able to turn the tide against the invaders. After that the Amazons laid low for a few generations, building back their numbers and vowing revenge in their next big encounter. Early on the established trade policies with their neighbors and colonies which allows an Amazon to sleep with any man of her choosing at the proper time and season. Any son born of that union gets returned to his father and labors as a worker, but daughters go to live with their mothers and are taught to be good little Amazon soldiers. They’re not really looking for equality with men, you see…to Hippolyta and her sisters, Men are only good for procreation. They want to prove that women are superior to men in every way as a kind of ‘I told you so’ statement to Ares, their father. That’s why the Amazons are known as ‘The Daughters of Ares,’ even though they despise the male half of the divine pantheon and everything it stands for. The reason Zeus never put a stop to it was Hera thought the idea of women being on top was just peachy, so she talked him into allowing their granddaughters to do what they want with their Mortals, and just as long as they remember to sacrifice in the name of the Goddesses, she’s happy to let things slide, even if she is kind of irked about the ‘No Marriage’ that used to be in effect. In fact, she’s the one who talked Zeus into declaring that an Amazon who gets beaten by a man has to acknowledge him as her husband. Hippolyta met Herakles by accident, when he was poaching on Amazon lands and dared attempt to claim a deer which she had brought low with her arrow. He disputed her claim and they fought, and to her amazement she was brought low. Hippolyta knew when she recovered that she was duty bound by Amazon laws to make this Herakles into her husband and official royal Consort, and it was her petition to the Goddess Hecate that brought her and her sisters to Mount Olympus to lay their claims before Zeus. However her claim didn’t come into fruition until in the midst of his Twelve Labors, Heracles and his cousin King Theseus of Athens came to the land of the Amazons in Asia Minor to retrieve the Girdle of Ghea from Hippolyta. On the way they ran into a hunting party of Amazons led by Hippolyta who attacked him. However Hippolyta gave a much better showing this time due to the fact she was wearing the Girdle, which gave her the edge. Still Heracles managed to win in the end, but only by clever use of strategy and tactics. The two were warmly invited home to their capitol city of Themiscrya and given a banquet in honor of the two great conquering heroes, Heracle and King Theseus who defeated Antiope who admittedly didn’t put up much of a fight. However Hera and Ares who wasn’t thrilled at the idea of having Heracles for a son-in-law spread a few rumors that Herc was going to kidnap Hippolyta and take her back with him to Mycenae, which started a near-riot among her sacred guard inside the palace. One of 'Lyta's own sisters came charging into the royal bedchambers and scared him out of ten years of growth when she tried to brain him with an ax. Of course he beat a hasty retreat out of there, knocking both "Lyta and Orestia unconscious in the process. Then he rescued Theseus and Antiope from the other sister, Melianites, and they fought their way back to the dockside and got their ship out of the harbor before the sun had fully set over the mountains. Hippolyta ended up pregnant and her people had voted to go to war with Athens. Said war, of course, proved to be such a disaster that the Amazons were almost destroyed as a nation. They broke apart into separate tribes and went their different paths, some going east to the Gods Know What fate, others taking a ship and sailing west to parts unknown, while those who stayed loyal to Hippolyta gathered around her and petitioned the Gods for the preservation of their nation. Of course what they didn't know was that she had a special inside track with the Gods, being one of them on both sides of her family tree. She asked Aphrodite for help and that's how she and her people got spirited away to that island they called Paradise to spend the next three thousand years in near absolute isolation. When Diana was born Hippolyta wanted her to believe that she was born without any help from a guy as part of her whole 'We don't need men' kick while actually covered up the fact that she'd let Heracles escape her clutches in violation of her own laws. It was a face-saving gesture, nothing more, she deliberately mislead her people, vilified Heracles and cooked up the whole story about Diana being created out of clay to cover the fact that she was behind the whole Exile thing. Category:Continuum-59343921